Catheter based devices are employed in various medical and surgical applications as they are relatively non-invasive and allow for precise treatment of localized tissues that are otherwise inaccessible. Catheters may be easily inserted and navigated through the blood vessels and arteries, allowing non-invasive access to areas of the body with relatively little trauma. A particular application for a catheter-based system is tissue ablation, which is typically achieved by cooling a portion of the catheter to a very low temperature through the use of a cryogenic fluid flowing through the catheter, and subsequently ablating the target tissue through thermal transfer between the catheter and the tissue.
In order to achieve a temperature sufficient to ablate the target tissue, the fluid flowing through the catheter may be highly pressurized. Should any portion of the catheter rupture or develop a fluid leak, the pressurized fluid could disperse into the patient's tissue, potentially causing a life threatening embolus to form. While an outer covering or additional layer of material may be employed to structurally reinforce portions of the catheter to prevent or reduce the likelihood of a fluid leak, a physician performing an ablative procedure may be unaware that a breach or structural failure of a catheter has occurred.
Moreover, an outer layer or covering may be vacuum sealed around the cooling chamber, which may require a vacuum source and/or coupling in addition to the vacuum source and/or coupling attached to a coolant return path providing circulation through the catheter. Having multiple vacuum connections and sources requires additional connectors and flow paths which can complicate the overall catheter and increase the cost of manufacture and implementation.
As such, it would be beneficial to provide a catheter that has the capability to provide substantially instantaneous leak detection while reducing the complexity of the catheter's flow paths and connections.